July 16-17, 2013

July 16-17, 2013

It is July and Tucson’s summer heat is getting old.  It is time for us to seek cooler climes.  After spinning the globe, we settled on the northern half of Eastern Europe.  This is new territory for us. For most of my adult life, it was behind the Iron Curtain and for the most part off-limits to Westerners.  Many years ago, I got a little peak behind the Wall on a day pass to East Berlin.  East Germany at the time was a strict authoritarian state with few personal freedoms.  It was a little scary back then passing through the barbed wire of Checkpoint Charlie into Communist territory all by myself.  The wall was torn down in 1989 and most of the Warsaw Pact countries have embraced capitalism wholeheartedly.

After many hours in the air and three plane changes we arrive in Warsaw, capital of Poland.  This is the country where the cracks in the Iron Curtain were first torn open.  

We get to the hotel in Warsaw very late in the evening.  It is morning back in Tucson so we are experiencing major jet lag. I know the only way to reset our body clocks is to stay up as long as we can.  So we get out and take a long walk before hitting the sack.  Warsaw is a nice city with wide boulevards and lots of monuments and statues.  We walk through a beautiful park with a memorial to Poland's favorite son composer, Frederick Chopin.  We finish our stroll with a pint of the local beer at an outdoor cafe.  And as a bonus the temperature is 30F cooler than home.  A great start to our vacation!